How I envied his sturdy stomach! With the remark that I was going to
have a stroll round the town and should be back to settle things in
half an hour, I hastened into the open.
CHAPTER XV
MISERIA
"What do people do here?" I once asked at a little town between Rome
and Naples; and the man with whom I talked, shrugging his shoulders,
answered curtly, "_C'e miseria_"--there's nothing but poverty. The
same reply would be given in towns and villages without number
throughout the length of Italy. I had seen poverty enough, and
squalid conditions of life, but the most ugly and repulsive
collection of houses I ever came upon was the town of Squillace. I
admit the depressing effect of rain and cloud, and of hunger worse
than unsatisfied; these things count emphatically in my case; but
under no conditions could inhabited Squillace be other than an
offence to eye and nostril. The houses are, with one or two
exceptions, ground-floor hovels; scarce a weather-tight dwelling is
discoverable; the general impression is that of dilapidated squalor.
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